Anyway, figuring that I’d originally paid three or four bucks apiece for them and did not want to waste money, I nabbed the old boxes from my closet. Then I folded, taped and assembled each one, proceeding afterward to load ‘em up with my earthly treasures. The first problem which arose was figuring out a safe way to stack the danged things. With dented corners, torn tops, and rounded sides, this was no easy task. But, with the help of more heavy duty packaging tape than I thought I’d need, I managed, sort of. The next steps in the process proved to be a bit more of a challenge. I live in a huge old Victorian house which has been converted to eight small apartments. Fortunately my apartment is on the ground floor, close to the main entry door. Unfortunately, outside the main entry door there remains a small flight of concrete stairs which one must traverse in order to get to street level. I’m a big fan of full disclosure – those who know me well would tell you that I’m not the most coordinated guy in town, which I’ve found both amusing and perplexing because of the unforgiving nature of the work I did for nearly twenty-five years in climbing and painting large – often very high – billboards. My klutziness is mainly due to my being ‘in my head’ a lot, and not paying close enough attention to what’s going on around me. Such was not the case when I was a teenager – back then I was just plain clumsy. My siblings will readily tell you of how everyone would grab breakable drinking glasses, dishware, etc. whenever I was about to get up from the dinner table.

So, the next step was to get the boxed goods from my apartment to my truck. Easy, right? One would think so. The first thing I noticed about the now full, roundish boxes with the afore-mentioned dents, tears, etc. was that it was really difficult to get a solid purchase with my hands on the cardboard when stooping to pick one up. But, I managed. Here’s where the fun started. I needed to get the boxes from my living room, out my front door, through the hallway, out of the main entrance, down the stairs, and to my truck. You’d think I would have had the foresight to open my front door before hefting a box off the floor – but no, I usually think of such things after the critical moment in which it would actually help has passed. So there I was, half bent over, balancing this once rectangular, crumpled box with my left arm and right thigh so I could open the door. Got it, that went fairly smoothly. Once through the doorway, the thought occurred to me that I’d really prefer to not have my neighbors possibly see what a mess my apartment is – and decided I now needed to close the door. So, again – left arm, right thigh. The box felt kind of mushy. As I reached for the doorknob with my free hand, the thing began to slowly slip down my right leg. In an attempt to correct for this unforeseen complication, I lunged forward with my free left leg – and solidly smacked the door jamb with the right side of my head. Hard. I’d bumped the door with the box in my arms and as my head made contact, the door had swung out of reach. Grumbling, I let the box fall to the floor. Was that a muffled, tinkling sound I heard as it touched down? I really don’t remember if I verbalized the contents of my brain out loud in that moment. I hope not.

Retrieving the box from the floor, my trip through the common hallway to the front entry was uneventful. The entry to my building consists of double doors. Facing them from the inside, the one on the left is for daily use, having one of those automatic door-closing thingy’s mounted on the top inside corner, and an automatically locking deadbolt. The door on the right is locked shut. Planning my strategy for getting the entry door open, I thought it best to set the box down this time. Easy. Now to twist the spring-loaded deadbolt, push the door open, grab the box and stick my left foot in the path of the returning door before it shut and automatically locked. I evidently did not move fast enough. The door swung open just fine, but was quicker to begin to swing shut than I’d remembered and pinched my foot between the concrete and the bottom of the door. My eyes narrowed (my children used to get as far from me as possible when this rare phenomenon occurred), my head still hurt from the first phase of this operation. I pulled my stuck foot out from under the door and flawlessly carried out my plan – until I came to the stairs. Still holding the door open with my left elbow, my field of vision was blocked in front of me by the box in my arms. Then I mis-judged the width of the landing. Stepping forward, my right foot found air, not concrete. Abruptly stumbling forward now, I immediately let go of the box and blindly grabbed for the handrail. The box, then airborne, cleared the stairs, hitting the cement walkway beyond, bursting one side completely open. A definite broken-glass ‘tinkling’ sound came from within. Finding the handrail, I grasped it tightly as my body spun left, my legs firmly pressed into the wrought iron railing to the point of bending my waist over the top, nearly doing a face-plant into the tall shrubbery adjacent to the stairs. I have no idea how both of my size thirteen feet landed squarely on the second step, but was eternally grateful they had.

I don’t like old moving boxes. Why?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
When Jesus spoke the parable of the New Wine, He was contrasting God’s Old Covenant of law which was given to the Jews, with the New Covenant of love and grace which is offered to any who will come, thereby illustrating the incompatibility between Judaism and Christianity. It’s also worth noting the history of the Christian Church has seen through the ages many outpourings of the Holy Spirit resulting in many new works, pouring new wine into new wineskins. In a literal sense, new wine is fermenting. The strain brought about by gas pressure from new wine poured into old, hardened wineskins is that it would cause the wineskin to rupture. A new wineskin is pliable and will allow for expansion during the fermentation process. As time goes by, man, being predisposed to ‘fixing’ that which already works through a variety of things which can and do supplant the work of the Spirit, causes the wineskin to harden, thereby limiting the effectiveness of that which worked well when it was new and fresh and filled with the life of God. In His infinite wisdom, God then raises up a new work, or wineskin – and pours out new wine – people led by His Spirit – to fill it as He accomplishes His purposes through the agency of the Holy Spirit both in and through the church in a general sense – and specifically in the hearts and minds of His people. He removes both His blessing and His Spirit from the old, hardened wineskin – it has become too inflexible, too rigid, filled with what at that point amounts to empty religiosity.

It has been said that the only real constant in life is change. From a human standpoint, we often become very uncomfortable with change in our lives, especially as one grows older – your mileage may vary. From a spiritual standpoint, theologians have argued points of view for centuries as to whether we, having a free will, engineer and orchestrate every change or circumstance in our lives as God looks on, or those changes have been preordained of God and we are as puppets on a string, having little input in living out our scripted lives on an eternal stage. Both positions in my opinion can be extreme and I tend to believe that each has it’s place in the grand scheme of things. However I do not wish to use this forum as a Bully Pulpit to argue the merits of Calvin vs. Arminius. For me to attempt to do so would constitute a fool’s errand. My thinking here has a far more immediate and personal application – if for no other reason than we simply live in a changing world – and my world is changing.

In my last writing, Part 1, I spoke of being in my little aluminum fishing boat, tucked into a narrow inlet on a lake as an unexpected windstorm came up. In the words which follow, I will endeavor to draw some parallels from that day, then apply them. Please note this is not an attempt to communicate a self-help guide on adapting to change, but my own thoughts and experiences with things both seen – and unseen – regarding to the changing circumstances in which I have lived in the past, as well as those in which I currently find myself.

First, my plan.
I had spied out the inlet where I wanted to go fishing the day before and it looked to be idyllic. I had carefully laid out my gear that evening, stowing it in a place which would be easily accessible in the pre-dawn hours. I’d checked the fuel level in my boat’s gas tank, made sure the outboard motor was working correctly, and that my battery was adequately charged. In short, I was all set. Or so I thought.

Sometimes life gets in the way.
Although I’d planned my outing well, and had done my best to be certain that I’d covered any contingency, my morning on the lake turned out to be nothing like I had envisioned. I hadn’t expected to overheat – and wished I’d thought to bring along some shorts. When the wind came up, I learned that my anchor wasn’t big enough to hold the boat as the wind speed increased. Had I paid closer attention to the fishing line I’d cast into the water, it probably would not have snagged the lake’s bottom and snapped as the boat drifted. Had I considered the fact that I and my boat were protected from the wind on the main body of the lake by the hills surrounding the inlet, I’d have left at the first sign of changing weather and possibly avoided the tumultuous ride back to the docks. With the onset of each of these events, I was required to adapt to the changing circumstances in which I found myself. Lacking sufficient experience with sudden windstorms, I did not respond in a proactive way at the time. Believe me, should I ever face similar circumstances, I will likely fare much better.

It’s all about the details.
My point here is this; life happens in the otherwise mundane details of each day – not necessarily in the ‘big moments’, or during times of great indecision. It is in attending to those details, mixed with the experience one gains over time – often through adversity – that produces wisdom. I must confess here that years ago, I sadly allowed my heart to drift from God in significant ways and began to live for myself and my own indulgences. I have in the past few years, many times, made the singular decision to recommit my life, my purpose, my heart to God, then shrunk back. Why? Have you ever heard the saying, “The devil is in the details”? I have, and I frankly don’t like it because God’s revealed will is to be infinitely and intimately more involved in the details of my daily life. In retrospect, those so-called ‘big’ decisions I’d made to re-commit were no more than a nifty way to assuage the guilt and shame I continued to carry – because those decisions were not accompanied by a willingness to change.

It had been just after sunrise that I arrived at the inlet I’d chosen the day before. Twisting a switch on it’s cowling, the motor sputtered, then fell silent. Settling in, I had baited a hook, then cast my line into the ink-colored water. Although the morning had been quite cool, within a short time I’d begun to sweat. The combination of sunshine and still air prompted my mind to ponder the physics of the infrared portion of the solar-ray spectrum. I mused at how infrared rays do not rely upon a medium, such as air, to conduct the sun’s energy, but will heat any object they strike. That object, this morning, was me. Now fully exposed, I’d removed my jacket, donned sunglasses and a ball-cap to shield my eyes from the penetrating sun. Fishing would be slow going that morning. Who am I trying to kid? For me, fishing is almost always slow going.

After sitting awhile, taking in the pristine setting of which I was part, as I wondered just what my threshold for patience would be this morning I’d noticed that a soft puff of wind had momentarily cooled my skin. Then another. And another. Within a half hour or so a welcomed, gentle breeze had come up. The water no longer held the mirror-like reflection of the surrounding tree-covered hills. Now the lake’s surface was scalloped with tiny ripples, varying in size and direction according to the force of the air upon the water. I put my jacket back on, then dropped my boat’s anchor in an attempt to keep the rising wind from blowing my boat towards the shore of the narrow inlet. A few moments later, without warning a gust of wind sent the boat into a long rotating arc around the anchor line. My fishing hook evidently – and irretrievably – snagged on something on the lake’s bottom and my line snapped. Before I could finish reeling in the remaining line, the windswept boat reached the end of it’s arc – and anchor rope. Then it began to drag the lightweight anchor – and me – once more towards the shore. Acting quickly to avoid running aground, I switched the motor to the ‘On’ position, then yanked the starter rope which protruded from the front of the outboard motor. The engine spun to life.

I gathered the anchor and navigated to the center of the inlet, pointing the bow towards home… well, campsite. Breakfast this morning would be sans-trout. The once scalloped ripples on the water had intensified to a light chop, rhythmically slapping against the bow as I headed back. Unknown to me until I cleared the inlet, I’d been protected from the wind on the main body of the lake which now blew with force. My circa 1966 boat groaned as I struggled to steer – then hold – a course towards the docks. Now chilled – and getting colder – I managed to rifle through my belongings and found a hooded sweatshirt. It was then that I learned of the difference between finding and putting on a sweatshirt in the unyielding wind while trying to steer a boat in what had become very rough water. I finally prevailed and pulled the sweatshirt over my jacket. Then I lifted the hood up and over my ball-cap, tying it in such a way as to encircle my face, the bill of my cap protruding out from under the hood. White-capped waves now broke against – and over – the bow, sending copious amounts of water my way. I switched on the small electric bilge pump I’d recently installed to remove excess water from inside the boat and eventually made my way back. Once my boat had been securely tied to the dock, I walked back to camp, drenched and somewhat disgusted.
What had happened to my pristine morning, filled with the hope of a fresh catch and a delicious breakfast?

Now years later, as I have considered that morning on the lake many times, I have noted several parallels between it and the subject of change. Every now and then, I have this thing in my mind that just ends up being difficult to put into words. On top of that, when I have found the words and have been able to articulate my thoughts with a reasonable degree of logical progression and clarity (to me, anyway), some have concluded that I’m just a very trippy guy. Pardon the 1970’s vernacular. What can I say – they’re probably correct. That said, it is my hope, with the help of the preceding story as a metaphor, to make sense in my endeavor to, as one reader of this blog commented, synthesize my thoughts and feelings with regard to change in my own life – past, present, and my hope for the future – into words. The winds of change are indeed blowing in my life – in significant ways. ◊

Part 2 of 3 is HERE.